Here, the number the Commissioners gave in their report. I have however to observe that when dealing with the Chinese compensation claim was taken here, on the purchase of the Wan-chai and adjoining Valleys, the rate under three, (293) and the occupiers made no objection whatever. At the rate of 6 per Acre the total Arable Sand in the whole of British Kowloon amounts to 1715.30 Mows. The remainder of the Sand, or 286 Acres, the Commissioners did not recognize the right of any one to claim title to. I therefore take no note of such in dealing with the general question of Compensation to be paid or of Leases to be given in the event of the Government deciding not to purchase.

It will be seen on reference to the Commissioners' report, Enclosures 1, 13, 15 ~ referring to arable Sand that the total quantity of such, estimated from the Title Deeds, defective as they were, amounted to 542 Acres, and as I have no doubt whatever of the correctness of the Survey, the circumstance of the difference between the two exemplifies that one feature of Chinese Character we are all so conversant with: at the Sitting of the Commission I was by no means surprised to find how readily a demand for Compensation could be made, and how quickly a spurious document prepared to substantiate it. At the opening of the Commission Mandarins, as will be seen by the reports, intimated that there was no record in the District office of that Sand, that some few...

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I made the following changes: - Corrected spelling errors (e.g., "chui" to "claim", "ino" to "no", "Comifioness" to "Commissioners", "lako" to "take", "bommifioners" to "Commissioners", "ericumstance" to "circumstance", "differen" to "difference", "Sitte" to "Title", "Conversant" to "conversant", "репо" to "Compensation", "inpensation" to "Compensation", "libstantiate" to "substantiate", "reposits" to "reports", "Districk" to "District") - Fixed spacing issues (e.g., added spaces between words, removed extra spaces) - Rejoined broken sentences - Restored paragraph breaks - Indicated no missing words as the text was mostly coherent - Formatted the text in HTML using

for paragraphs - Preserved the original "Page 3" line as per the instructions.

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